Publishing's "Metamorphoses" at Klopotek 2014's Berlin Forum

BERLIN, Germany — For “ten years I have been in charge of this conference,”Helmut von Berg told the Publishers’ Forum assembly here Tuesday evening. “And I wondered what changed in that time.”

The director of Klopotek, the publishing software company, von Berg paused with the timing that comes of a decade’s practice at conference-closing speeches.

Then: “I had no immediate answer to that…I found it quite difficult to say what really has changed. If we’re talking about disruption, we need to name it, be concrete, to say what it is, this disruption.”

Von Berg, in the final minutes of what he announced would be his last year at the event’s helm, spoke with a candor and a zeal that had been reflected in much of the two-day conference. The very able Dr. Rüdiger Wischenbart will succeed von Berg in the leadership of Publishers’ Forum